had lately arrived the Eighth Light Dragoons and the Thirty-eighth and Fifty-fifth Foot, sadly belated, since the infantry, with Dundas's usual wisdom, had been embarked at Bristol; but General Stewart, the commandant at Ostend, did not think it prudent after Clerfaye's defeat to send them down country.[1] Happily Pichegru did not pursue his advantage as
May 3. he ought. He did indeed push a detachment northward from Menin upon Roulers, which was attacked and defeated with a loss of two hundred men and three guns by three squadrons of the Allied cavalry;[2] but there his activity ceased; and he solemnly sat himself down about Moorseele on the left bank of the Lys, with one flank resting on Menin and the other on Courtrai, as if to allow time for Coburg's army to come up in his front.[3]
Coburg meanwhile had passed through no enviable
April 28. days. On the 28th news reached him that Kaunitz on his left wing had been forced back by overwhelming numbers to the Sambre, while on his right wing Pichegru had made his way to Courtrai; but, however serious the outlook, he was still tied for the present to the miserable and useless fortress of Landrecies. By a strange irony Mack on that very day submitted a plan of future operations, whereby Bouchain, Cambrai, Avesnes, and Maubeuge were in succession to be besieged;[4] but circumstances on
- ↑ Stewart to Dundas, 30th April; Craig to Nepean, 25th April; Adjutant-general to Duke of York, 22nd April, 1794. These two unfortunate battalions spent three weeks on the passage.
- ↑ York to Dundas, 6th May 1794.
- ↑ It is curious to note that Jomini's account makes the French force front to the south, whereas Craig conceived of it as facing to the north; so that evidently it was prepared to face either way.
- ↑ Witzleben, ii. 167. Memorandum of the 28th of April in W.O. Corres.
